Photo: California Dawn Sportfishing

The Count

The chart tells the story. Berkeley fleet striper counts went 226 → 461 → 312 → 302 across the past four weeks — a clean ramp through the back half of April, a monster peak the week of May 7, and a high-300s plateau that's holding through Memorial Day. Add the halibut bonus and the port logged 416 fish last week, +33.8% week-over-week and +53.4% month-over-month.

The 5/7 week did the heavy lifting: 461 stripers across the dock in 7 days, with California Dawn II responsible for 257 of them — call it 37 fish per day, every day, single boat. Pacific Dream put up 149 the same week, California Dawn 131, Happy Hooker 127. Four boats over 100 stripers in a single week. That's a port-wide bite, not a one-skipper hot streak.

The weeks after softened to 302–312 stripers, which sounds like a slowdown — until you check the headline numbers from Memorial Day weekend: California Dawn II ran 24 halibut and 22 stripers on Monday May 25, and on May 27 the same boat posted 20 limits of striped bass plus 3 halibut. Twenty limits = 40 stripers on a single half-day. The bite hasn't quit; the fleet just spread its trips wider and the chart smoothed.

A note on the leaderboard: California Dawn II, California Dawn, and New California Dawn all run out of the same 225 University Ave dock — Capt. James Smith Jr.'s outfit has been the engine of this run, with California Dawn II alone landing 534 stripers over the past 30 days (about 41% of the port's striped bass volume). Happy Hooker and Pacific Dream work out of K-Dock under Capt. Chris Smith and put up another 557 stripers combined. Add California Dawn II's 99 California halibut bonus and James Smith Jr.'s three boats account for the lion's share of port volume on both species. Gatherer II showed up briefly in the peak week and has been quiet since.

Conditions Right Now

Inside the Gate, the bay is at 60.6°F per the Berkeley weather panel — well past the 58°F threshold where stripers go from sluggish to actively chasing bait. Outside the Gate at the SF Bar buoy, the ocean is still 55°F with a 5.6 ft WSW swell at a long 20-second period. None of that matters at Berkeley — the Flats sit in the shadow of the Marin headlands and the Bay Bridge breakwall absorbs the swell before it reaches the dock.

The other story is the Delta. CDEC station DTO clocked 7,902 CFS of outflow on May 27, more than double the 3,864 CFS reading from May 19. Late-spring snowmelt is pushing hard, and that freshwater wedge is doing two things: cooling and oxygenating the central Bay, and concentrating bait against the salinity gradient. Anchovies follow the saltwater edge, and stripers follow the anchovies. The fleet's been finding both in the Berkeley–Treasure Island corridor, exactly where you'd expect a 7,000+ CFS outflow to stack them.

Tide swings are heading into the full moon window. Sunday May 31 is the full moon — the second full moon of May, a Blue Moon — and tide range climbs from 4.7 ft today through 6.6 ft Friday to 6.7 ft Saturday through Monday. Strong tide = strong drift = stripers feeding on the moving water. The forecast keeps the wind light SW through the entire run, so you get the tide without the chop.

7-Day Forecast

Today is the only MAYBE on the strip — NWS is calling a 30% chance of light rain through midday with the strongest wind of the week (S 6–15 mph). It'll still fish, but it's the throwaway day if your week is flexible. Friday cleans up to partly sunny and lighter wind. Saturday through Tuesday is the prime window: sunny, light SW, full moon tides, water creeping up toward 62°F. Monday is the calmest day on the strip (3–10 mph SW, 64°F air, 6 ft tide swing on the morning low).

Why This Week's Conditions Match the Last 4 Weeks of Hot Bite

Every box matches except the moon — and the upgrade from mixed phases to a full moon on Sunday is bigger tides, not worse fishing. The Delta outflow has stepped up to its highest reading of the month exactly as the moon goes full. If you've been watching for the conditions to line up, this is them.

What Captains Are Saying

Three things to read into the captain quotes. First, three consecutive days of limit trips on California Dawn II — Memorial Day, the wind-blown Tuesday, and the half-day Wednesday — means the fish are pinned to a specific zone. The boat isn't running around looking; they're parked. Second, the halibut-bass ratio on Cal Dawn II flipped between Monday and Wednesday — 24 halibut + 22 bass on Memorial Day, 3 halibut + 40 bass two days later. That's the bait moving, not the fish leaving. When chovies stack up on a rockpile, the bass push the halibut off; when bait gets thin, halibut hold and bass scatter. Either way, you're catching fish. Third, Lovely Martha limiting on bass out of SF Wharf the same day means the bite covers the central Bay end-to-end — Berkeley, SF Wharf, and (per our Emeryville dashboard) Emeryville is +238% week-over-week with 414 stripers of its own. This is a bay-wide event, not a single landing's hot streak.

Tackle Loadout